Oh, what will this year bring?

Dreaming the Biggest Dream

January 15, 2008 on 10:44 pm | In Paul |

It’s funny, sometimes when you are talking and talking and you really want your kid to listen and he’s just not not not, it turns out that he was listening after all.

 

Last week, Paul wanted to show me something on the computer, the website for a mixed martial arts school in Rochester. Frankly, I wasn’t much interested but I looked because he was so excited. He explained that this school teaches whatever form is the same one that the UFC fighters (my eyes were already starting to glaze over). He showed me the page on grappling classes, the one on striking classes, what it takes to get through the beginner and advanced levels until he could take the real MMA classes. He showed me the cost and when my eyes bugged out, he explained that it was pretty reasonable because it was unlimited and on and on and on. I didn’t really make the connection until he asked if we could go see it. Then I figured out that he wanted to enroll there. So he can learn to be a fighter. Like those tough Ultimate Championship Fighters who fight, often bloodied, in a cage.

Oh.

We drove down to the school on Wednesday night, taking the highway so Paul would see the way. I had already told him that he’d need to take his test and get his license because I was not going to drive into the city to pick him up at 9 o’clock every night. He said, yep, he’d do that.

 

We found the school, a brick, rectangular building with a large, fogged window in front. I parked on the street and, as we entered, my glasses steamed up. Although it was cold outside, inside was hot and wet with sweat, the men striking at each other fiercely, dripping and red-faced. Others stood around in gray clothes that clung to them in dark gray patches. It was the most testosterone-laden place I’d ever been in. I felt very middle-age Mom from the suburbs.

 

We watched the class land punches to their partners’ mitts, ducking when the mitt came back at them. The sound of their gloves made a solid thunk when it made a good connection, a popping of punches up and down the line of fighters. Paul tried not to grin but to look cool and unimpressed but I knew he was thrilled.

 

We watched a bit longer, then Paul said, “Ready?” He knew this wasn’t my thing but I wanted him to get his fill.

“Whenever you are,” I answered. He nodded and we slipped out the door and into the dark chill of the night.

 

“What did you think?” I asked.

 

“That’s how fighters start out,” he said. “They start out some place small, just basic, and then they work at it.”

 

I nodded. We settled into the car, taking the non-highway route home so he’d see that path too.

 

“I’m going to finish out boxing first,” he said. He had just returned to boxing twice a week after six months off. “Then I’ll wait until school gets out, then I’ll get a job and work during the day and go there every night.”

 

“That’s the way to do it,” I said.

 

I thought of a conversation I’d had with my Dad when Paul first started talking about wanting to be a fighter. Dad had started to form a plan, Paul should do this and Paul should do that. I remember telling Dad that Paul wasn’t ready to figure out the steps he needed to take to get there, he was still in the toying-with-the-idea stage, but he’d figure it out eventually. On that drive home, I realized that eventually had arrived. Paul had thought about what he wanted to do, what he needed to do to get there, how to get what he needed, a plan for making it so. He had watched the UFC fighters, learning how they trained, then used his computer to search out the available schools across the area, country, and world. He had done all of this on his own without any help from me and I wondered how he knew how to do all that.

 

It dawned on me that maybe he was listening more often than I gave him credit for. All those times when I told him to ignore what everyone else was doing, that he should pursue what he felt most passionate about, when he came up with ideas that were what others wanted him to do but he described in a lackluster way. I told him he wasn’t dreaming big enough, dream bigger, dream the biggest freaking dream you can. He’s 18 years old, six months away from the beginning of his real life, making his own decisions, and taking the first steps of living his dream.

 

I guess he was listening after all.